Use YouTube to get more email addresses!

We know that social media draws people in, and engages them. Many people spend a lot of their spare time on these platforms, and sometimes even job time. Also, the time people spend on social media is increasing, making it important for marketers to consider them, and think about how to best utilize them. There's no doubt that your target audience is there, and the question is only how to best use the medium and what your goals are – goals that can differ greatly depending on what's most interesting to you.

Collecting Email Addresses Is key

To make marketing via newsletter possible, a list of email recipients to send them to is necessary, recipients interested in what you have to offer. This means that use of social media won't necessarily be about marketing your products and services. Instead, it might mainly be about collecting the email addresses of possible customers. Thanks to the smart and accurate target group customizing possible on social media, you can focus on either a familiar target group, or a completely new one. Best of all: It doesn't have to cost much to gather a lot of valuable information, information that you can use to build future marketing campaigns.

Newsletters work, we know that. Even if the majority of the recipients won't read them, it doesn't mean you've failed. As a matter of fact, just a small group of interested readers can make a real difference for your bottom line. If nothing else, you'll notice it by analyzing the leads coming from your newsletters, and what they actually do when they visit your site. Of course, the goal is always that as many people as possible should open your newsletters, read them and engage with them, and for that to happen, they need to be the right kind of recipients. It's these email addresses that it's really interesting to you to collect, and that's something you can do via social media – for example YouTube. Let us show you how!

YouTube Advertising – smooth and easy

As with most social media, like Twitter, YouTube advertising is all about the keywords. This means the ads you run on YouTube will be seen by people searching using those words or phrases on YouTube, looking for videos they want to see.

Your ads will show up not only as clickable search results, but also as ads inside the videos themselves, when people watch them. This can be done in a few different ways: One version is an ad that shows before the main video starts, another is a sponsored sidebar next to the video. If you elect to be part of the Google Display Network, your ads will also be displayed on sites other than YouTube, despite the fact that's where you're advertising from.

This was some of the basics about how ads will be shown when advertising on YouTube. Now, let us show you how to get started with YouTube advertising.

Step by Step – We Show You How

Pick Your Video

The first thing you have to do is pick the video you'll use for your ad. You can't use an unpublished video as an ad, so the first thing you have to do is upload it to your YouTube channel. When you've done that, the next step is to use YouTube's campaign tools, where you'll have to add the link to your published video.

Create Your Ad

You may already know that successful advertising depends on good imagery combined with good copy. If you're not sure you can do this, find somebody to help you. When it comes to the goals of the advertising campaign, this varies from company to company, but we'll focus on creating a list of email addresses. For that, offering those who register something of value, like an e-book or a free information video relevant to the subject matter, is a good idea.

To begin with you need to pick a headline and two descriptions of the video. Normally, you can use up to 100 characters, and each description may be up to 35 characters long. As usual when it comes to headlines, it's good to be clear and get straight to the point. You need to capture the readers attention to make sure they read the description, and the description should be written as a CTA, Call To Action. The key to creating interest is clarity, so be as clear as possible.

This is also where you can pick a featured image, which will be shown when the video isn't playing, and you'll get four to choose from. Next, it's time to pick the page where the target group will land – a page where they quickly and easily can enter their email addresses.

Set a Budget

This is the crux, something that might worry many. How much should I pay for my advertising? YouTube will give you a suggestion of about €10 per day, which is often good for the first round of advertising, where you get a feel for the market and your target group. If this doesn't work at all, you might need to fine-tune and change your ad, taking a good look at everything from the description to the video itself. YouTube will also help you with the level of CPV, Cost-Per-View, to use. Either you can decide for yourself how much a view of the ad is worth, or YouTube will set a reasonable level, about €0.10-0.20, by itself. Also, you'll only have to pay if somebody watches at least 30 seconds of your video.

Pick your Target Audience

Like on other social media platforms, finding the target group of interest to you is easy. The trick is to be very specific in your choices, and those are plentiful, other than things like country and region. During this step you can also decide if there are places you don't want your ad to be seen, if it's going to be part of the Google Display Network. Though usually, it's best to let it be seen everywhere.

Further customization includes things like age, gender and interests. Be careful, and try to picture what your target audience looks like, and what their interests are, to best reach your target audience.

After that step you're actually finished, and this is all it takes to get started with advertising on YouTube. All you need to do now is send your ad for approval from Google and YouTube, and then start following you ad in Google Analytics.

It's not easy generating leads nowadays, but YouTube offers a good extra alternative to try out. YouTube allows you to quickly put up ads that will help you fill your email address lists, at the same time as you find new customers.

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